Saga of the Goblin Horde (Savage Worlds)

Last month I said I'd try to run a game in English for the September Rollenspieltreffen, and here it is: Saga of the Goblin Horde!

For time immemorial, goblins have been mercilessly hunted down and killed by the so-called "civilized" humans, slaughtered in droves for the entertainment of bloodthirsty adventurers. But everyone has their limits, even the underdogs.

The pathetic goblins who eke out a living near the human lands are weak and timid, the aggression bred out of them through generations of culling, with only the most cowardly among them managing to survive. But the feral goblins of the western tribes are another matter entirely, as the rapidly encroaching scourge of human civilization is about to discover.

On the border between the goblin and human lands, the goblins are scattered and disorganized, and mostly consist of small families huddled together in caves. Bands of humans frequently attack these underground warrens, stealing whatever they can carry and leaving a pile of corpses in their wake. In their ignorance, the humans have come to assume that these tame and sniveling goblins are representative of the entire race.

Driven by their insatiable greed and bloodlust, the humans have pushed ever deeper into goblin territory, and the tribes have finally taken notice.

The Setting

In Saga of the Goblin Horde, the players take on the role of vicious goblinoid gang bosses from the Redfang tribe, striking the first blow against the relentless tide of humanity.

The setting is dark fantasy with black humor, and while the characters' antics can be somewhat comical at times, these are not the bumblingly incompetent goblins you might envision from other settings; the gang bosses are ruthless and deadly.

The System

The system is Savage Worlds, which is pretty easy to pick up if you've not played it before. If you are already familiar with Savage Worlds, be aware that I'm using the new Shaken and Quick Combat rules from Pinnacle, the Critical Failures and Joker's Wild setting rules from SWD, and a couple of new Setting Rules:

Like a Boss: Each PC has a number of goblin gang members equal to half their Spirit die plus one. Yes, this means there will be a lot of allied Extras on the battlefield!

Meat Shield: Once per round, a PC who suffers one or more wounds from a single attack may spend a Benny to redirect the damage to an adjacent allied goblin Extra (even if they belong to another gang). Bugbears still suffer half damage if they use this option, because they're so big.

Manu's girlfriend, Heike, didn't think she could play originally - but has now said she would like to accept my offer and reprise her role as Izzy Toecutter.

It's been a while since I've GM'd for such a large group, and the gangs are going to make this an interesting challenge, so I'm going to be delegating the Action Deck to Manu, and placing more emphasis on narrative-driven abstract systems like Chases and Dramatic Tasks.

@Myrthe: If you or your partner particularly want to play a female character, let me know and I can whip up an extra archetype.

Manu's girlfriend, Heike, didn't think she could play originally - but has now said she would like to accept my offer and reprise her role as Izzy Toecutter.

It's been a while since I've GM'd for such a large group, and the gangs are going to make this an interesting challenge, so I'm going to be delegating the Action Deck to Manu, and placing more emphasis on narrative-driven abstract systems like Chases and Dramatic Tasks.

@Myrthe: If you or your partner particularly want to play a female character, let me know and I can whip up an extra archetype.

Hi Zadmar, if possible I prefer playing a female character, but if there is not enough time for you to prep one I can also play male.

Ten brave adventurers set forth from the frontier town of Riverside, investigating rumors of a nest of vile goblins living in the nearby mountains. They expected to find gold and glory, but found only death, as the pint-sized fiends lured them into one ambush after another. Only the bard survived, but he had been tortured physically and psychologically by the goblins, and never sang again.

A couple of days later, the town itself came under attack, presumably by the same group of goblins. The vicious creatures destroyed two of the town's taverns and stole the third, smashing its supports so that it slid into the water. They rode the stolen tavern down the river, surfed it over a waterfall, and escaped into the night.

In case anyone is interested, I recently went on the Wild Die Podcast to talk about Saga of the Goblin Horde. The episode is available here.

I've also just released the Saga of the Goblin Horde Player's Guide, you can get it (along with the archetypes and six adventures) from here. The full setting book is still two or three months off. After that I plan to convert it to my own system.